Note: dated 30 August 1901

72.
30/VIII 01 [Munich].

Dear P. B.!

I received your letter today and sent my article's proofs to Dietz this very day. I made the correction you indicated — at the end, separating the liberals from the revolutionaries who had lumped themselves together under one "we." As for the "providential slip of the tongue," I could do nothing more about it: changing that passage would have required such substantial alterations, and the entire spirit of the article does not permit me to change it in the sense of eliminating the "one-sidedness" (You are right, of course, that the treatment is "one-sided": in a polemical article devoted to attacking one of the flanks of our opponents, how could one observe comprehensiveness right there! That is, I mean to say, that this deficiency lies too deep to be eliminated by a separate change — and not at all that I fail to see the deficiency here).

We received all your letters. Regarding your sister [A. I. Elizarova], I don't know how matters stand with her, as I haven't had news from her for some time.

You have received, of course, Alexei's [Martov's] letter with an account of the obstacle to the congress¹)? We shall await how you and Danevich [Gurevich] resolve this matter.

No. 7 has come out, and it has certainly been sent to you. In No. 8 there is an article by Ryazanov "The Tsar's Tavern" (on the wine monopoly), followed by a planned article on the new law (8 July) concerning the allotment of lands to the nobility in Siberia²). In the social chronicle there is a report on the congress of liberals, on outrages in the treatment of exiles in Siberia, on the deep ferment in such backwater places as Kursk, on a rebellion of seminarians and gymnasium students³). Then we received a very interesting article by a worker — a response to Dodonov⁴), who attacked the Ivanovo-Voznesensk workers in "Russian Wealth." The article is very good, they say (I haven't read it yet), so we don't know where it would be better: in the Iskra or in Zarya. In No. 8 of the Iskra there is a letter from Danevich [Gurevich] from France.

But Zarya has no foreign review whatsoever! And there will hardly be an internal one either⁵). Disaster! And how this Zarya is swelling. Now there are already 6 sheets plus 4 (Plekhanov "Critique")) plus 2 (he against Bernstein) plus 2 (Nevzorov [Steklov] plus Alexei [Martov]) plus 2—3 (Velikaya Dmitrievna-Zasulich and Starover [Potresov])... And I am completely stuck on the agrarian question⁶).

Well, perhaps we shall see each other soon.

I shake your hand firmly. Your Petrov.

___________

¹) On the "congress" see letter 65, note 8. The letter from Martov to which Lenin refers here is printed in "Letters of Yu. O. Martov and P. B. Axelrod," letter No. 16.

²) V. I. Lenin's article: "Serf-owners at Work" in No. 8 of the Iskra.

³) From the Social Life. Zemstvo Congress. Kursk, Siberia (No. 8 of the Iskra).

⁴) Lenin speaks of Dodonov's article in "Russian Wealth" for 1900, No. 12, titled "Russian Manchester" (letters on Ivanovo-Voznesensk). The author wrote in it, among other things: "On the one hand, there is deep indifference to knowledge, to the point that only one out of ten literate workers is interested in books; a complete absence of solidarity, and on the other hand, the city of Ivanovo-Voznesensk and its surroundings represent one of the most ancient factory centers in Russia"... (p. 66). Against this assessment of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk worker there appeared, albeit timidly, protests even in "Russian Wealth" itself: a letter from M. Kamenev — "On V. Dodonov's Article" in No. 1 of "Russian Wealth" for 1901. A response to Dodonov on behalf of the Iskra was given in a special supplement to No. 9 of the Iskra: "Response to Mr. Dodonov." It is possible that the author was I. V. Babushkin.

⁵) The "Internal Review" for Nos. 2—3 of Zarya was written by Lenin (Vol. V of Lenin's Collected Works, pp. 70—114). The foreign review — an article by L. Martov on the Lübeck Congress of the German Social-Democratic Party in Nos. 2—3 of Zarya.

⁶) The article "Messrs. Critics of Marx on the Agrarian Question."